(Thanks also to Amy Keane who helped write some of the lessons. Scroll to the bottom of the page for the lessons.)

When you come across a
long word you have never seen before, do you sound it out
letter-by-letter? Chances are, you don't -- sounding words out
letter-by-letter is horribly inefficient. Young children who are
just beginning to learn to read typically, briefly, go through a phase
in their development of "sounding out" words letter-by-letter.
That's an important stage in the development of readers – but more
experienced readers develop much more efficient decoding strategies.

The
key to reading success is to develop efficient reading skills, and it
is very inefficient to read words letter-by-letter,
left-to-right. Instead, efficient readers recognize patterns in
the word, and process words as "chunks." There are certain letter
clusters that occur in English words very often, and our brains learn
to process those letters together like a single unit. For
example, why would any experienced reader "sound out" the letters "ING"
or "PRE" or "IES." Those patterns of letters occur together so
often, our brains just treat them as one chunk.

The
letters "ENT," for example, occur in that order in over 4000 different
words in the English language – likewise the letters "ATE," "EST," and
"INE." If you know how to pronounce LATE, DATE, and GATE, then
words like FATE, RATE, and GRATE should pose no challenge. Once
children learn to "sound out" simple, short words letter by letter, it
is time to teach them to pay attention to the word parts and recognize
chunks of letters with fluency and automaticity.

Working with
urban schools serving children from linguistically and economically
diverse backgrounds, I saw a desperate need to teach students these
fluent decoding and "chunking" skills. Many students in 3rd, 4th,
even 5th grade in the schools where I worked were struggling to decode
simple words like GREEN, PAINT, and CART. Amazingly, when I would
write the word "ART" on a piece of paper (for example), the student
could identify it immediately, but the same student would struggle with
words like CART, SMART, and START. Clearly nobody had taught
these students to "read by analogy," or to look for word parts that
they know from other words.

The teachers I worked with
understood the crippling nature of these decoding problems, but they
typically did not know what to do. They had very little time for basic
decoding instruction.

So, I created a lesson format that only
takes 10 to 15 minutes to teach. This lesson format is rapid and
routine, so students learn to move very quickly through the
steps. While the routine is consistent, the content or focus of
the lesson can change every day. The combination of rapid and
familiar routine with a changing focus makes this a fun game for the
kids.

In addition to teaching basic decoding and fluency skills,
I also wanted to reinforce some other literacy skills sorely lacking in
our diverse population of students. I wanted to include a little
vocabulary instruction, grammar, and writing, all packed into a quick
15 minute routine. I was aiming for simple and efficient.
You don't need to cut out letter tiles. You don't need to plan
any lessons. I have several dozen of them here for you, and I'll
keep making more.

When practiced, this entire routine takes just
15 minutes. At first, more time may be needed, but if it is done
every day, it becomes routine, and the entire exercise can be done very
quickly. This is an excellent use of time that might otherwise be
used poorly, such as first thing in the morning, right before or after
lunch or recess or right before going home for the day.